


exposure

by pyrrhic_victory



Series: dangerous sentiments [9]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (he will always be autistic to me), Autistic Julian Bashir, Depression, Eugenics, Garak's issues, Genetic Engineering, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Julian's issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Post-Episode: s03e21 The Die Is Cast, References to Addiction, also known as: Julian attempts to bully Garak into doing one (1) self care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victory/pseuds/pyrrhic_victory
Summary: Garak finds out.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: dangerous sentiments [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576258
Comments: 36
Kudos: 247





	exposure

**Author's Note:**

> this is set the morning directly after the end of the last instalment, and sort of acts as a companion to it. Garak finally looks at the datarod Tain gave him.

“You awake yet?” Julian’s voice was close. “I’ve got a shift.” 

Garak had maybe two seconds before his mind kicked in and he remembered where he was and everything that had happened. 

One. 

A warm body somewhere to his left. 

Two.

The warship crumbled around him. 

Tain was dead. 

He sighed.

“Hmm.” 

His head hurt. Julian kissed his cheek before disappearing into the bathroom. A bizarre human custom which he pondered as the morning drifted over him, and it felt like no time at all had passed before Julian was back. He sat up and watched him dress. 

“I was thinking,” Julian started, and Garak sighed, bracing himself for something he already knew he wasn’t going to like. “There are some medical treatments we should try for you.” 

Garak wasn’t aware he was in need of medical treatment. This was why he didn’t trust doctors.

“I’m sorry?” He mumbled.

“It’ll probably take a few goes to get the right kind of medication, but it’s better that than sending your endorphin levels up and down like a seesaw every time you drink. I would have said something a year ago, but you seemed fine, so I just let it go. Of course you weren’t fine, you were addicted to the equivalent of drugs for two years, for God’s sake, of course you weren’t fine - but you never _say_ anything and I know I can be oblivious at the best of times-” 

“Julian. Slow down.” Those were a lot of long words for a tired, hungover man who was still trying to come to terms with his place in the universe. “You’re saying you want to treat my tendency to self-medicate by...medicating me yourself?”

Julian threw him a disapproving look. “I want to treat the depression you’ve been medicating yourself for, with something that might actually help on a long-term basis.” 

“Depression is a human disease,” Garak dismissively said. Julian was guilty of that infuriating Federation habit of assuming that his species’ standards could be equated to every other. 

“Maybe so,” Julian shrugged, which was a change from his usual attempts at universalising the human experience. “But do you really want to sit there and tell me you’re not suffering from whatever the Cardassian equivalent is?” 

Ah, there it was. “There isn’t a Cardassian equivalent. Searching for false parallels between our cultures and biologies is just as bad as-” 

Julian cut in. “You’re tired, lethargic, you don’t sleep well. You’re obviously miserable. You drink far more than is good for you and I _know_ you know better. I’ve noticed you being anxious more often than you think, and last night you had a panic attack. You all but admitted to having suicidal thoughts more than once. And sometimes I worry that you’re going to hurt yourself worse than you did last night.”

 _You try being exiled to a freezing space station for the rest of your life and see how cheerful you feel,_ Garak thought, but that was too much like an admission to actually say, so he just shoved himself out of bed. The sudden movement didn’t help his headache. It wasn’t often that he woke up immediately craving a drink, but this was one of those times, if only to clear the pain in his head and to forget how much he’d embarrassed himself. 

“Your _medication_ isn’t going to fix my situation,” he pointed out. 

“No, but it will make you feel less miserable about it. Not right away, not like the other things you do. But it will level out your brain chemistry over time so that eventually, you won’t feel the need to use such unhealthy coping mechanisms just to feel alright.”

Garak didn’t reply. He just fumbled for the painkillers in his drawer and swallowed them. 

He didn’t know how it felt to wake up and be _alright_ with no interference. All he remembered was each day getting progressively worse and worse until he couldn’t tolerate his life without the wire in his head permanently switched on. He needed something; a drink or the rush of the implant or some stupid self-destructive impulse he’d regret when he was left with a headache or a wound he couldn’t heal without a trip to the infirmary. His old life was not one he could put on hold because he was feeling a bit down, or not feeling anything at all except anger and apathy and anxiety. 

To feel alright, purely neutral or even good - that just seemed impossible. 

Was that what Julian was talking about? Things had been this way so long that he couldn’t quite believe that there was another way to feel. Not for him. 

“Elim.”

“Hm?” 

He looked up. Julian was watching him like he was a dangerous animal that might lash out. 

“Will you at least think about it?”

This had to be difficult for Julian. Garak didn’t know what he’d do if Julian was the one having the breakdown and he had to pick up the pieces. 

Unless-

Unless the doctor wanted to give him this medication for another reason. One that only the datarod Tain had given him could reveal. Either way, he wasn’t about to submit to a dose of an unspecified drug just yet. 

“Alright. I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you.” The relief was palpable in Julian’s voice. “Please try to eat something while I’m out. And you’ll still be dehydrated, so you should drink plenty of water. And please don’t drink any alcohol today, God knows whether your liver will be able to handle it. And-”

“Julian.” Garak cut him off. “Go to work. I’ll still be here when you return.” He couldn’t face cleaning up the wreckage of his shop yet. 

“Good, because I was also going to tell you to take it easy. But we’ll have lunch later.” 

“Perhaps,” Garak hedged. The datarod in his jacket pocket would determine whether he’d be able to face the doctor or not. 

“Not _perhaps_. I will be here, and you will eat something with me. I know for a fact that you didn’t eat yesterday.” 

Garak wanted to be annoyed, but Julian’s domineering concern was strangely touching. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had actually cared enough about his wellbeing to try and argue with him about it. 

“How? Have you been spying on me?” He played up his best, most horrified expression. 

Julian gave him a disapproving look. “Because you didn’t argue with me just then. Look, just- think about what I said, and we can talk about it later. I love you.” The words came so easily to him, as though they were nothing. 

( _Maybe they are,_ the awful voice in his head hissed.)

The doctor squeezed his shoulder and he drank in the contact knowing that whatever was on that file, the relationship would change. Garak kissed him, one last time, and then he was leaving. 

“Julian?” He turned back. “Thank you.” 

Julian just smiled and waved as he ducked out of the door. He was the last thing Garak had, the last good thing, and soon enough he might not even have Julian.

His jacket had been neatly placed on the back of a chair - Julian must have done that last night, specifically because it was Garak’s and he knew Garak was fussy about his clothes, because he usually tossed his Starfleet uniform to the floor. 

The datarod. Bright red. 

He turned it in his fingers a few times like he would a small knife.

 _“Especially the lies,"_ he murmured to himself, and slid it into the computer. 

He’d been expecting to find Starfleet documents, perhaps ordering Julian undercover, or to use his relationship with Garak in some way. Or maybe evidence that he wasn’t human after all, and was in deep cover from some rival intelligence agency. The Tal Shiar were fond of that kind of thing, but Julian acted about as Romulan as he did Klingon. 

The truth, which wasn’t difficult to piece together from the school reports and transport logs to and from Adigeon Prime he’d been given, was far more complicated than that: Julian Bashir had been genetically enhanced as a child.

He did some research, and it occurred to him for a brief moment that everything he’d believed was a lie. That perhaps Julian really was that clever, that everything he’d done for Garak was a cover for some greater plan he was keeping to himself, that being an augment meant he was just as dangerous as those the Federation had feared since the Eugenics Wars. 

But Garak was no longer important enough to any intelligence agency to warrant that kind of attention as a ruse. 

Maybe Julian was dangerous, in the way that anyone with a quick mind is dangerous if they want to be, but not dangerous the way Garak was. This was the man who kept a teddy bear on his shelf and talked to it when he was alone. This was the man who held him while he wept, who helped him time after time without receiving anything in return. Julian was a good person, insofar as Garak believed that there was such a thing. 

Julian made him want to believe in good people.

Bloodlines were so important to Cardassians that his people wouldn’t dare tamper with their own DNA. That Bashir’s own _parents_ had done this would be inconceivable. To alter their own _child_ …

No wonder he never wanted to talk about them. 

Then again, if it had been even slightly acceptable on Cardassia, he had no doubt Tain would have altered him down to his genes to make him a better agent. More obedient too, if such a thing could be coded into one’s DNA. He didn’t like to think of Julian living through what he had with Tain - the fear, the violence, the mind games, being relentlessly tested and trained, beaten into shape. Maybe that was why he was so unfailingly kind. What had turned Garak into a neurotic torturer had turned Julian into a compassionate doctor. 

For a while he was lost in thought about Julian and what must have been done to him, with an uncomfortable crawling feeling that he’d underestimated both his ability and the dark thing that hid behind his eyes when certain topics were brought up, and he forgot that this was what Tain had wanted him to see. 

_Proof your dear doctor can’t be trusted._

Tain didn’t care about him. He hadn’t given him this information out of concern for Garak’s welfare. He’d dug it up on purpose to drive them apart, to sever Garak’s only real tie to the station and cure him of intolerable sentimentality once and for all. He’d wanted to prove that Julian Bashir was a lie. But he’d missed one crucial thing: Elim Garak was a lie too. 

Genetic engineering was illegal in the Federation. Julian was a Starfleet officer, and a doctor on top of that - and he was breaking the law simply by being both. He had every right to lie to protect himself from discrimination, and to protect his parents. 

And Tain had missed that too. All he’d done was prove how ignorant he was of how it felt to be someone else’s dirty secret. 

Maybe the person Garak used to be would have reacted differently. Maybe the intelligence agent, the right hand man of Enabran Tain, would have mistrusted Julian after learning this. But whoever he was now, this Elim Garak didn’t give a damn what Julian was or that he had lied about it. Because-

Because he loved him.

He loved Julian. 

In the life he’d lived before, that was as good as a death sentence, it was damn near suicide to still trust someone after discovering something like this. But that life was gone, and so was the man that created it. All he had left were decades of bad memories, the wreckage of the empty existence he’d led on this station, and Julian. 

He wanted that to be enough. 

***

Julian rang the door chime, and was relieved that the doors to Garak’s quarters slid open a few seconds later without complaint. The lights were on, which was an improvement on yesterday. Garak was at his desk, which was also an improvement, and reading, ostensibly, though it looked more like he was blankly staring at the padd in his hands. He stood up and fiddled with the padd, with a distracted expression. 

“Ah, doctor. Pleasant morning?” If Julian hadn’t known him better, he’d say Garak looked nervous. 

“It was alright. Odo asked about you.” 

“Oh? What am I supposed to have done now?” Garak asked, as he made his way around the desk. “Headed up the Tal Shiar?”

Julian restrained the urge to roll his eyes. “He wanted to know if you were feeling better, actually.” Odo had stopped in the entrance to the infirmary for 42 seconds longer than usual on his morning patrol specifically to ask. Garak stopped dead and blinked rapidly at him with that reptilian head-tilt. 

“Forgive me, doctor, did I hear you correctly? You said _Odo_ asked you if I was feeling better?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. So did Quark.” 

_“Quark?_ Are you certain you didn’t take a dose of something hallucinogenic by accident this morning? A fungus released through the air vents, perhaps?” 

Julian smiled at the derision in Garak’s voice, and reached to touch his arm. After last night, he needed to feel that his Cardassian was still there. Garak was still here, still in one piece. Or at least, all the broken pieces of him were still in one place, being held together by spite and stubbornness and goodness knows what else. Julian kissed his cheek and hugged him close. As always, Garak went stiff for a second before relaxing against him.

“Believe it or not, you do actually have friends here,” Julian said, voice muffled by Garak’s shoulder. 

“So it would seem.” He sounded like he was erring on the side of not believing that he could have friends here - or anywhere else, for that matter. If he wasn’t so familiar with the feeling himself, Julian might have found it sad.

“Are you?” Julian asked, realising Garak hadn’t actually answered. 

“Am I what?” 

He once again restrained the urge to roll his eyes, as he frequently had to do with Garak, and pulled back so he could look at him properly. He still had dark circles under his eyes and a sort of pinched look to his face, like he hadn’t eaten or slept properly in a while, though he’d showered and changed clothes since yesterday, which was a good sign. 

“Feeling better, Elim. Are you?” Getting information out of him was like squeezing blood from a stone. A sarcastic, evasive stone that didn’t like talking about its feelings. 

“Yes, much better. Thank you.” 

_“Garak."_

He sighed very heavily. “Better than I was last night. I apologise that you had to see that.” 

Julian squeezed his shoulder. “I’d much rather be there than have you go through any of this alone. Have you had a chance to think about what I said? I worked up some formulas that will be a good place to start.” 

Garak looked away unsubtly. “Ah. I was hoping to talk to you about something else first, if you don’t mind.” 

Julian wasn’t surprised that he was still deflecting about that, but the fact that he hadn’t rejected the idea of medication completely and unequivocally so far was a hopeful sign. 

“Oh. Alright, then. What is it?”

Garak picked up the padd from his desk and turned it absently in his hands as he spoke. 

“When Constable Odo discovered the true nature of our relationship, the only advantage I saw was that we would no longer have to perfectly evade the watchful eyes of a certain shapeshifting Chief of Security. But you saw it differently. You were relieved that Odo knew the truth, because it meant that there was one less person you had to lie to.”

Julian frowned. “Not all of us can be as pathologically secretive as you are. Maybe that’s a human flaw.” 

“Oh, it certainly is. But a charming one, I’ve come to find. I told you once that I never tell the truth, because I don’t believe it exists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that statement was only partially correct. The other reason is that the truth is complicated, it’s a messy web of contradictions with a thousand points of focus. It’s impossible to speak it with one voice, or even a thousand.”

Julian felt an odd lurch in his stomach at the seriousness Garak’s tone had adopted. He couldn’t see where this was going.

“But you are human,” Garak continued, “and humans seem to make it their mission to discover the _truth_ at the core of everything, as though there is only one truth, as though one person’s truth ought to be similar to any other. That drive seems built in to your culture, to your literature, everything. That drive is also why you hate lying to people. You don’t differentiate between a lie that one uses as a weapon, and a lie one wears like armour. And you have worn your armour for so long that it feels like a second skin, and though it is necessary to keep you alive, you have grown to hate it.” 

The lurch in his stomach became more of a skin-crawling sensation, a light-fingered spider that tapped its way up his back.

“Garak.” He had to clear his throat. He could feel himself leaning away without even meaning to. “What are you talking about?” 

He knew exactly what Garak was talking about. He’d dreaded this conversation ever since he was fifteen years old. The dark, scarred-over part of him that had never quite healed, that he tried not to look at or think about, that he’d practiced hiding so well that the lie had become part of him. 

Julian’s heart thundered. He counted it for a few seconds, calculated 82.6 bpm. It was something to do besides panic. 

“Your Starfleet superiors don’t even know, do they?”

86.2.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

91.5.

“Julian.” 

A cold hand brushed against his. He stayed limp, motionless, unable to think his way out of this. All he could think of was the painful thundering in his ears, and of counting it. Calculating. 

95.4. 

“I expect nobody knows except your family.”

100.1.

“Please, stop.” 

“You know, I’m really quite proud of you for carrying out such a grand deception right under the noses of those who would persecute you.” 

107.5.

“This isn’t funny, Garak.” 

“Ah, well, that would be because I’m not joking.” 

Everything felt too tight, too hot. He backed up again. The exit was behind him, 2.34 metres, he could be out in 1.6 seconds, accounting for the time it took the door to open-

Garak’s hand was on his shoulder, holding him in place- 

“Stop it!” He wrenched himself free and staggered back. 

118.2.

“Would you kindly stop panicking for just a moment and listen to what I’m trying to say?” 

“No, I bloody will not!" 

“Julian-” 

“Shut up!” He couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak. He didn’t know what he’d say if he could. He just stood there, staring at Garak, who stared right back at him, eyes wide. Julian had never snapped at him like that before. 

120.7.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” Garak gently said, like he was talking to a scared animal. Julian shook- literally, he felt himself trembling in a foreign, uncomfortable way. 

“If that’s true, then please, just stop talking. Whatever you think you know, if you really care about me, just- just- leave it alone, alright? You have so many bloody secrets, Garak, and I let you keep far more of them than is healthy in a relationship. You owe me at least this one.” 

119.1.

Remarkably, impossibly, Garak sighed and inclined his head in acceptance. 

“Very well. You are more than welcome to your fair share of secrets, and if that is what you truly desire, it would be quite hypocritical of me to demand you share them.” Garak approached more gently this time and stroked a light touch down Julian’s neck, making him all the more aware of the sweat that had started to accumulate there. 

Julian tried to relax. It didn’t go very well. 

119.8.

“Thank you,” he awkwardly said, still shocked that Garak had actually agreed to let it go. He’d expected to be pushed until he broke. That was Garak’s job, after all. Or it used to be. And he usually delighted in pushing all Julian’s buttons. 

But Garak just bowed, plastered on a new smile and turned away. 

120.1.

“I believe you suggested lunch. Would you like to try that new Bolian restaurant on the upper level?” 

Julian blinked at him. “What?”

“Lunch, doctor. You were quite insistent earlier.”

“So that’s it, then? You really aren’t going to ask?” To his surprise, when he heard his own voice, he sounded disappointed. 

“You just instructed me not to. I would be a poor companion if I ignored your request when you insisted so adamantly.” Half the trouble with Garak was working out when he was being facetious. Julian couldn’t have placed a bet either way. 

“But how can you just leave it like that? If you know what I think _you_ think you know, how could you just go on and ask me out to lunch knowing _that_ , like it doesn’t even matter?” 

Garak looked at him with that wide-eyed twitchy look of his that he seemed to use when he wanted to look innocent, or when he was uncomfortable. 

“Does it?” 

“Of course it matters!” Julian exclaimed. Garak just blinked at him, and Julian was certain he was being deliberately obtuse. 

“Why?”

“What do you mean, _why?_ I’m a freak, I’m this artificially constructed, robotic _thing,_ and you’re acting like it’s _no big deal_ that I’m genetically engineered!” 

120.4.

The words left him and hovered in the air. Julian heard them echoing, could remember the exact sound of each as it left his mouth, over and over and over. 

He said it.

He actually said it out loud. 

This being the first time he’d ever admitted what he was, he momentarily stopped breathing. And, being a creature that required respiration to survive, this was not ideal. 

121.7.

Garak’s expression twitched. If Julian didn’t know better, he’d say he looked sad, almost sympathetic. 

122.3.

“What was done to you as a child was distasteful, to say the least. But you are not merely the sum of the things that have been done to you.” 

Julian shook his head. “You don’t understand.” The heat on the back of his neck had crept to his head and turned to a different emotion he couldn’t quite get a grip on, something hot and shaky that made him want to pace up and down. “I’m not like other people. I’m a glorified computer, Garak. An illegal one, at that. If something had gone wrong with the procedure-”

“But it didn’t,” Garak calmly interrupted. 

Julian scoffed. 

119.4.

“So what? I’m still not human. I’m- I’m barely even real!” He started to pace. Sort of. An aborted step here and there, three paces left and then a scuff off his shoe on the floor, then another couple of paces. 

“My dear…” Garak trailed off. Julian looked back to see him smiling at the ground, a private sort of smile. “Sometimes I think you get so caught up in yourself that you forget who you’re talking to. I’m no more _real_ than you are. And being human, _pure and natural,_ is not the virtue humans think it is. Despite the Federation and their so-called tolerance of other races, it is still only _tolerance_.” 

“This really isn’t the time for another conversation about the failings of the human condition,” Julian tiredly said. He didn’t know exactly what he was feeling, except that it wasn’t good and he wished none of this was happening. 

114.3.

“Perhaps not. But the treatment of people such as yourself is a perfect example of the way any society views those members who do not align with their self-image. You were born human, and your alterations were conducted by humans, to make you a more capable _human_ , and they succeeded. You are a doctor, a Starfleet officer. By this point in your career you have doubtless saved hundreds of lives, and will go on to save thousands more. And yet if your superiors knew how you acquired your intelligence, you would be discharged, correct?” 

“And arrested. It’s prohibited for an augment to practice medicine or serve in Starfleet.” 

Julian felt the need to pace again, more smoothly this time, back and forth between the desk and the sofa. He used his limited control over his vital signs to force his heart-rate down, back under control. 

113.6. 113.4. 112.9. 

“For all of human history, we’ve wanted nothing more than to progress. To learn more, to be quicker and cleverer than we have been before. It was only a matter of time before education and training stopped being enough, and we started altering ourselves at the genetic level.” 

Garak nodded slowly. “Humanity wanted perfection.” 

“And then things got out of hand. The procedures sometimes did more harm than good. And even when they didn’t, some of those who were successfully _perfected_ became dangerous. And so we had the Eugenics Wars. Genetic engineering became illegal, to prevent anyone else from becoming the next Khan. Every augment was vilified for the actions of a few.”

“So much for tolerance. They created you, then condemned you. You became...exiles,” Garak added. 

110.5.

Julian just looked at him. That was the exact feeling. Being adrift from society, from his friends, his family. The knowledge of what he was hung over him so heavily that he could never escape from its shadow. He could never express himself properly, never demonstrate the full extent of his skills. He was an exile even as he functioned in his society, pretending to be ordinary. He was an exile from himself. 

“What about your parents?” Garak asked. “I assume this is the reason you no longer speak.” 

Julian scoffed. 

108.8.

“I found out when I was fifteen, when my parents told me I had to give up my dream of playing tennis professionally, because I’d be tested so rigorously that there was a risk I’d be exposed as genetically engineered and expelled from the sport for having an unfair advantage. Or rather, they were afraid that _they_ would be exposed for what they had done to me and serve time in prison.”

He stopped pacing and crossed back over to where Garak stood in front of the desk. There was a strange look on his face, sort of sad but sort of appraising, too. Working out his expressions was still difficult, since he was not only a different species but also a pathological liar, though Julian was starting to get the hang of it these days. 

“You blame them,” Garak said. 

“How could I not? I have to spend my entire life hiding what I am and looking over my shoulder because of a decision they made because I was a bit slower than my peers when I was six. Six years old, Garak.” 

105.1.

“Do you have any idea of the range in human developmental stages?” Julian asked, and the fury really started to rise then. “I could have caught up on my own in a few years with a bit of extra help, but they never even gave me a chance. They couldn’t risk me being a disappointment, so they took everything they didn’t like and flushed it away, and built themselves a new son without any disabilities or imperfections.” 

Fifteen years of repressed bitterness seemed to be surging to the surface as he remembered - in painfully accurate detail, thanks to their modifications - every time his father had pushed him and told him to take on more and more at school, insisted that he could do better but shouldn’t be _too_ good. 

102.7.

He remembered the conversation when he buzzed with excitement about playing in the Grand Slam, the youngest player ever to compete, and his mother had fluttered around as his father told him in no uncertain terms that he would not be participating. 

Medical school, apparently, has less rigorous testing for ‘unfair advantages’ than most sporting associations. 

Garak sighed. “You became the perfect son. You were exactly what they moulded you to be, and you still weren’t good enough. If you succeeded, it was because of what they did for you, and if you failed, it was because you weren’t trying hard enough.” His tone was one of weary understanding. 

“You don’t talk about your family either,” Julian said.

“No, I don’t. Suffice to say, being exactly what my father wanted did not make him despise me any less.” It seemed he wouldn’t elaborate further. 

98.7.

Julian’s chest hurt a little less now. 

“How did you find out?” He found himself asking. “Does anyone else know- you know?” 

Garak looked uncomfortable. “Oh, Tain handed me the information, and he was not known for leaving loose ends. I highly doubt anyone else has a copy of that file now.” 

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. 

“Tain? You mean you’ve known since-?” Had that been part of what he was losing his mind about last night?

But Garak shook his head. 

“I didn’t know what the file said until I opened it this morning, and with your permission, of course, I will destroy it.” 

Julian was raw, exposed. He didn’t know what to say or think or feel. 

“It really doesn’t bother you? That I am what I am.”

“I’m fiercely curious about your mind, of course, but you’re no monster.” 

Julian didn’t know what to do with that. All his life he’d expected to be convicted, feared, at the very least rejected if his secret came out. But here Garak was, acting like it was merely an interesting, if sad, chapter of his history. He could destroy Julian’s life if he wanted to. His own life was in pieces, and he had shown before that he was prone to self-destruction so violent that it could spin out of control and hurt other people, too. What if one day the noise in his head got so loud that he snapped and spilled Julian’s secret?

“No-one has ever known this about you before now,” Garak gently said, waking him from his somewhat paranoid worry. 

“It is a bit disorienting, I have to admit.”

“But perhaps beneficial, in the long run, now that there is - as you once said - one less person you have to lie to. Someone very dear to me once said that too many secrets poison the soul.”

“Not a Cardassian, surely,” Julian smiled.

“In fact, it was. We are not all what we appear to be.” If Garak was the sort of person who winked, he certainly would have done so then. Fortunately, he was only the kind of person who smiled smugly when he got the chance to prove Julian wrong, and smile smugly he did. 

“Apparently not,” Julian said. 

He didn’t know how to feel. A secret relationship being revealed was one thing, but this? No-one except his parents had ever known this. He’d hidden it all his life, from every friend and lover he’d ever had, from every teacher and superior officer. He’d hidden it from Palis, and probably would have continued to do so until he died. Simply telling someone the truth was an unimaginable feat. Maybe that was the way Garak saw every tiny secret he guarded himself: not kept by choice, but because to do otherwise was too dangerous to contemplate. 

And maybe it said something about how far Julian had fallen for Garak that his concern was not that Garak would betray him in a deliberate conspiracy, but that it would happen in a moment of weakness. 

He trusted this man. 

Not his words - he’d be truly naive to believe a word Garak said to him - but Garak didn’t expect him to. Garak lied all the time, to tell a story, to entertain Julian, to share things about himself in his own roundabout way, not because he expected to be taken literally. Julian had made his peace with that, and somehow, he had come to trust the man behind the words. 

“Julian?” 

He melted into Garak’s arms with no resistance, and hunched over so his face was hidden. A cool hand brushed through his hair. Being without the protective shell of his lie around him was strange. Garak was right; he’d worn that armour so long that it had become part of him, and he had no idea how to behave now that it had been pulled away. 

“I’d like to try that Bolian restaurant now,” Julian weakly said, and Garak laughed in delighted surprise. 

“An excellent suggestion.” 

When he pulled back, and looked up at Garak, it was like they were meeting again for the first time. Garak gave him an appraising look, then pulled a bright red datarod from his pocket and held it out. 

“The file.”

“Oh.” 

Julian looked at the datarod blankly. He knew he should put it in the replicator and destroy it, but the fact that it even existed in the first place posed such an anxiety-inducing response that all he could do was look at it. 

“Judging by this long and uncomfortable silence, I’m going to assume you won’t mind if I do the honours,” Garak said, pointing the rod at the replicator. 

“Oh. Right. Please, go ahead.” 

Julian watched the rod dissolve. The electrical whir of the station buzzed around him. In the viewport, stars glistened in the distance, and below it sat the Cardassian _das’shra_ flower he’d given Garak months ago. 

He came back to himself and found Garak watching him, waiting patiently. 

“If I were human, I’d ask you some inane question along the lines of _are you alright?_ ” Garak said. “But since the universe kindly dealt me different cards, I will only ask if you truly wish to go out for lunch, or if you would feel more comfortable somewhere less…” 

“Exposed,” Julian finished. That was the strange feeling he was grappling with. Being wholly and completely exposed to Garak in a way he never thought he would be with anyone, more exposed now than any of the times he’d been naked together. Even during sex he could retreat behind the shield of his lie, the shield built by other people’s assumptions about him. 

“Exactly,” Garak nodded. The dark shadows under his eyes reminded Julian of the breakdown he’d tried to clean up last night, and realised that same shield was exactly what Garak had always used to protect himself. The same armour. 

Julian grabbed him and hugged him again, properly and firmly. He was still here. After all the chaos that had happened in the past week, they were both still here, with their secrets kept securely behind a deadlocked door, protected with Cardassian security protocols created by an ex-agent of the Obsidian Order. 

“Let’s eat here instead,” Julian said. “If that’s alright with you.” 

“Perfectly. I wasn’t in the mood for the hustle and bustle of the promenade, anyway.” 

Garak kissed his neck and traced along his eyebrow and cheekbone. 

“Julian…” For all Garak’s clever words, it was clear to Julian that he struggled intensely to voice his emotions until he was under extreme duress. He demonstrated his affection in other ways - like destroying incriminating information without a second’s thought. 

“I know,” Julian said. He took his hand and wove their fingers together, and put his other hand on top. He’d learned that gesture conveyed gratitude between Cardassians.

“No, please. Things are different now that I am no longer being watched so closely, and circumstance sometimes renders a little tasteless obviousness necessary, especially when it comes to you.” Garak’s free hand rested on his cheek. “You ought to know in no uncertain terms that your secret is safe with me. You are safe with me.” 

“Elim, I know.” Julian kissed him very briefly and gently, and rested his forehead against Garak’s. “I know. And now we’ve established that neither of us is about to kill the other…”

Garak sensed what he was going to say and sighed, avoiding eye contact. 

“Doctor…” 

“I’m not going to force you to do anything. If you’re dead set on not taking any medication, that’s fine. Just let me try a little bit of convincing first?” Julian hopefully said. 

“Very well. Convince away. But over lunch, please. We’ve already taken up a sizeable chunk of your lunch hour with this little adventure.” 

Julian buzzed with an odd mix of feelings as they set the table, ordered food from the replicator, and sat down. A vague twitchiness in his limbs that he usually got when he was excited about something and wanted to tell people about it, and a feeling like he was naked, exposed. 

He barely tasted the first few bites of his lunch, because he was just staring at them and thinking about how surreal it all was. Garak knew. 

Garak knew, and he didn’t care. 

“Alright,” Julian started, when they’d both started eating. He knew Garak had trust issues, to put it mildly, so he needed to be as thorough as he could when it came to explaining the science behind what he was talking about.

“In humans, the chemical most important in addiction is dopamine. It’s the brain’s ‘reward’ chemical, essentially. It makes you feel good. I assume Cardassians have some equivalent, but since I know you’re not going to tell me what it’s called, I’ll have to refer to endorphins in general. Most of the time, your endorphin levels are on a flat line, occasionally wavering up and down, but around a consistent average. When you drink or take drugs or-” 

“Activate an implant wired into your central nervous system,” Garak cut in, smiling tightly. 

“Exactly. When you do those things, your endorphin levels shoot up, and you feel good. When the high wears off, your endorphin levels go back to normal. But then you do it again, and again, and you need more of the substance each time to experience the same rush. And over time, your baseline level of endorphins gets lower, and the amount of the drug you need to take gets higher. So when you stop taking the drug, your endorphin level doesn’t go back down to normal, it shoots down to the floor. You become dependent on the drug to take you up from rock bottom to a normal mood.”

“Yes, I’m aware of the basic theory of addiction, doctor. What’s your point?” 

“My point is that your endorphin levels were naturally low before you started using the implant, due to the depression you’d been suffering, and abusing the implant - while it felt good at the time, was gradually lowering your baseline endorphin level even further, to the point where you needed to have it on all the time just to feel normal. You experienced the worst of that low during the acute withdrawal phase.” 

Garak grimaced at that. “I recall.” 

“What I think you’re dealing with now is post-acute withdrawal. Your brain was affected so severely by the implant that even after a year, it hasn’t been able to work up your endorphin levels to anything near normal. That, coupled with the depression you already had in the first place, plus other things that bother you, like the cold, your headaches, isolation from your people, everything that’s happened in the past week - and you said you’ve had panic attacks before?”

“Occasionally,” Garak admitted, through gritted teeth. 

“Right. So all of that adds up to the way you’re feeling now.” 

“Do enlighten me, doctor. How am I feeling?” 

“Utterly bloody exhausted, I’d imagine,” Julian said. Garak looked away. “And I don’t blame you. It’s hardly a surprise that your brain hasn’t recovered. Nothing about your situation has changed since you developed the addiction in the first place.” 

“Oh, I don’t know about that. One thing has certainly changed for the better,” Garak quietly interjected, looking at him. “But I’m curious. What is the difference between this medication you’re so insistent on and any other addictive substance?”

“Antidepressants aren’t like recreational drugs. They’re not an instant fix, so they’re not addictive, and they don’t interfere with your endorphin levels in uneven bursts. You take them every day for a few months, and your baseline improves gradually.”

“Hmm. But I will come to depend on this medication nonetheless.” 

“We can wean you off it when you’re ready.” 

Garak leaned forward over the table, staring at him with that piercing look that forced Julian to remember that he used to interrogate people for a living. “What if you can’t? What if I can’t function without it? Wouldn’t it be better not to start down that path again?” 

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Julian realised. “You don’t want to become dependent on something again?” 

Garak went back to poking at his soup. “It is a concern, is it not? You’ve said yourself that I have certain tendencies, which can be exacerbated by certain situations.”

“What I’m suggesting is the sort of medication that’s equivalent to...an antibiotic. Something that will actually help you. Being dependent on a drug that improves your quality of life is not something to be ashamed of.” 

Garak hummed, noncommittal in his expression. He wasn’t outright refusing, which meant he was still waiting for Julian to persuade him. Julian set his spoon aside and took Garak’s hand, slightly warm on the surface from where he’d been holding his teacup. 

“I know you don’t like doctors, or medicine, or the infirmary, and you’re pathologically distrustful of everyone and everything.” 

“With good reason.” 

“I’m sure. But I’d never do anything to hurt you. You know that, don’t you? All I want is to help you. And I think you told me about the noise in your head because at least some part of you wanted me to try.”

Garak looked down at their joined hands, frowning slightly. Julian let him think. It was a struggle to fight against the instinct to fill silence with superfluous words. 

“The life I led before this was...taxing, to say the least,” he eventually said. “At the time it was normal, because I’d never known anything else, but...let’s just say it has been a very long time since I’ve felt safe with another person. It was safer to keep these things buried so no-one could use them against me. I would rather have died than admit what I was doing to myself, what I had become. I would have, if not for your rather persistent attitude to my survival. I had almost forgotten what it was like to trust someone, until you.” 

After the conversation they’d just had, that floored him. Garak had only just found out that Julian was an augment. He knew Julian had been lying to everyone for fifteen years. Garak _knew_ and not only did he not care, but Julian was still the only person he trusted. The only person he felt truly safe with. It was more than Julian could have hoped for and he didn’t understand it, but he was grateful beyond words for the trust they’d managed to build between them. 

Garak seemed to sense his poorly concealed shock and smiled a little, and lowered his gaze to their hands again. 

“If you are certain that you can find a solution to this...depression, as you call it, I suppose it can’t hurt to indulge your medical instincts. Particularly since I know now that they may be even sharper than I was led to believe.” 

_Even knowing what I am, he trusts me to treat him. Patience really does have its rewards,_ Julian thought.

He squeezed Garak’s hand tighter. “You’re safe with me,” he said. 

Garak squeezed back. “I know. My dear…?”

“What?”

“Might I finish my soup before it drops below room temperature?” 

Julian realised he was holding the hand Garak had been using to hold his spoon, and released it. 

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No need to apologise. I’m willing to endure the ordeal of cold soup on your behalf.” 

Julian smiled and nudged his foot under the table. "I love you too." 

The worst thing he could imagine happening to him had happened, and it was alright. They were going to be alright. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been looking forward to writing this conversation for a long time!! and i know it is essentially a Lot of talking about feelings, but that's my favourite bit of fanfiction anyway. let me know what you think about this part!


End file.
